To appreciate how cycling kit has become a fashion money-spinner, consider Jason Hones. When Hones turned 40, and with “buggered knees”, he took up cycling to lose weight. To get the look, he was drawn to what everyone else was wearing – jerseys and knicks that mimicked those worn by professional teams.

In Hone’s case, that meant becoming a mobile billboard for France’s national lottery, Française des Jeux, as well as for Orica-GreenEDGE. He may have looked like someone competing in the Tour de France, but the cheap Chinese-made apparel meant he didn’t feel like it.

Erik Madigan Heck Trunk Archive / Snapper images

Searching for something better, he dabbled in European brands such as Assos and Castelli, and finally succumbed to Rapha – a British label with pops of pink that touts itself as “the world’s finest cycling clothing”. But even for Hones, a lawyer who lives on Sydney’s North Shore, Rapha seemed too pricey. So he switched to an Australian brand – Attaquer.

“I like the look and the cut, and I’ve now got about three or four seasons' worth of kit with them,” says Hones. Now aged 48, he has a wardrobe filled with knicks, jerseys and gilets, mostly in navy and black but with an occasional swoosh of sky blue or orange.

Australian cycling kit brand, Attaquer. Supplied

“I probably have upwards of 20 to 30 kits, mostly Attaquer but there’s also MAAP, Black Sheep, Rapha and Babici," he says. "A mate has the Attaquer zebra kit which he wears any time we’re training on the Taronga Zoo hill.”

Hones has even had Attaquer make a custom kit with the name of his law firm, Hones Lawyers, on the back, for a squad of riders that might swell to 20 on weekends. He subsidises the kit, and hands out the occasional freebie. “It’s a marketing exercise but it looks really good when we’re all wearing it.” The 60 or 70 kits emblazoned with his law firm logo cost about $20,000 each season.

More remarkable than the cost is that, even though cycling’s origins are in the style centres of France and Italy, Hones’ favoured brands are Australian.

Attaquer began in Sydney in 2012 and is most identifiable for its polarising, limited-edition kits with fully integrated designs across the knicks and jersey, such as the zebra, shark and sailor suits. Popular, too, are the jerseys that shout its brand name, perhaps fittingly in a city that demands assertiveness on the road.

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MAAP was founded in a Melbourne garage in 2014 and features pared-down styles in what might be a nod to the city’s penchant for wearing lots of black.

MAAP was founded in a Melbourne garage in 2014 and features pared-down styles. Supplied

Black Sheep was founded in the same year in another garage, this time on the Gold Coast, and is known for hyper-collectable limited releases of out-there styles: it claims to be the first to cover cycling kit in florals, and later, camouflage. Babici, started in 2009 in Sydney, offers jerseys in batik patterns, Aboriginal artwork and one with a Bedouin-style scarf printed around the shoulders.

Black Sheep is known for its hyper-collectable limited releases of out-there styles. Supplied

Babici founder Kev Babakian recently collaborated on a range with a Japanese tattoo artist. “All we do is create really beautiful apparel,” he says. “Europeans love our stuff.”

It’s all a long way from a team kit emblazoned with the logo of France’s national lottery. And yet the money is rolling in. Black Sheep is growing revenues by 30 per cent a year; at MAAP the growth is 60 per cent and Attaquer volunteers that it’s doing “double digits”.

All three brands says their biggest growth market is offshore. And while no one is cashing out yet, all are approaching a point where decisions need to be made about managing that expansion. As Black Sheep founder John Polson puts it, “It’s not a bad problem to have.”

“For sure, cycling kit has become a form of fashion,” says Ollie Cousins. “Gone are the days when a cyclist with a sense of style will accept wearing daggy kit on the bike.”

The pace is now set by a younger, more fashion-conscious generation who want their on-bike and off-bike image to align.

Cousins, 39, and his friend Jarrad Smith, 43, launched MAAP as a web-based and wholesale brand. They’d met when Cousins was design director for streetwear brand Globe, and Smith was a Globe house model. “The design aesthetic is strong in both of us,” says Cousins, who also worked on Mambo’s creative team. “I had always surfed, then Jarrad got me into cycling to keep fit, but it snowballed and took over my life. We raced in St Kilda club criteriums on Sundays and trained most days.”

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For Cousins, the MAMIL tag [middle-aged man in Lycra] is derogatory, and outdated. Older riders used to throw on their ill-fitting team kit, but the pace is now set by a younger, more fashion-conscious generation who want their on-bike and off-bike image to align.

“These 25- to 35-year old professional men and women, in particular, are proud to be called cyclists, and that’s the key to what has driven growth in our segment of the sport,” Cousins says. “It’s about stylish, performance-focused apparel.”

MAAP now has almost 20 staff, including two contractors in Europe and casual employees in a North Melbourne retail shop, which opened in September 2018. There are plans for a pop-up store in Sydney in October. Having bootstrapped themselves for their first few years, the pair are now drawing upon a bank loan and acknowledge they’ll need outside investors should they continue to grow. Of all the Australian cycling brands, they are most overt in pedalling the hardest.

Of all the Australian cycling brands, MAAP are the most overt in pedalling the hardest. Supplied

“Even though cycling apparel is driven by trends, it’s not fast fashion,” says Cousins. “It’s really performance-orientated fashion and that’s quite unique to cycling. There’s longevity for brands that really invest in R&D, and the potential to transition from start-ups into premium global lifestyle brands.”

If that sounds familiar – an Australian brand built around sport with global ambitions – it’s no mere coincidence. Cycling, says Cousins, has a synergy with surfing. “It’s a sport that makes you get up and explore the outdoors. You’ve escaped, you’re enjoying the natural landscape.”

And should you land on the website of pretty much any cycling apparel brand, your screen will be filled with beautifully shot images designed to make you feel exactly that – the lone man, or woman, on their machine in the wilderness, tearing down from a mountain top, the long and winding road back up.

We set out to create a cycling lifestyle brand which was very much inspired by what the surf brands created in the '80s and '90s.

— Jarrad Smith, MAAP co-founder

“We set out to create a cycling lifestyle brand which was very much inspired by what the surf brands created in the '80s and '90s,” says Smith. “Now we are seeing the sport transforming into lifestyle. Cycling betrays all aspects of your life; where you travel, which brands you wear casually, what social circles you are in. The style of growth is very similar to what the surf industry went through 30 years ago.

Jarrad Smith, left, and Ollie Cousins from MAAP. Supplied

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"The brands are all competing with each other and promoting the sport, developing collections, sponsoring teams and riders, hosting events. In the same way there were the big four brands in the surf industry, I think there’s room for the same in cycling.”

Playing Billabong to MAAP’S Rip Curl is John Polson, founder of Black Sheep. “The similarity between surfing and cycling is on a deep level; it’s the focus on community and the culture that comes off the back of that,” says Polson. “Cyclists identify as cyclists. It’s what we wake up for each morning.”

Polson, 32, is a physiotherapist and former professional triathlete who decided his passion was making and designing sportswear. “I really got into the aerodynamics and thermoregulation in fabrics. It has scientific appeal, where I use my foundational knowledge from the physiology perspective, and then the textiles are not just about performance but about comfort and durability. And this is something I understand from years as a triathlete.”

John Polson: "Cyclists identify as cyclists". Supplied

Polson says east Asia, including Taiwan are making the fastest advances in performance fabrics, which typically have been sourced from Italy and to a lesser extent Switzerland.

Sixty per cent of Black Sheep’s sales are generated overseas, which Polson attributes to a business model that requires his roughly 30 international distributors to do more than just sell kit.

“Our distributors represent a community-building approach rather than another sales channel,” he says. “How can we go into an area like Colombia and feel like Black Sheep is a part of that community? Maybe the distributor will organise local rides every week, or host the annual worldwide Man Ride, which we established to raise awareness about men’s mental health.

"We are an authentic brand trying to do good. I don’t see that changing as we grow. It’s comfortable for us; the only downside is it’s hard to measure the benefits.”

Last year Black Sheep launched its WMN range, designed by women, with 5 per cent of sales helping to finance promising young women to race overseas. Polson says he has no immediate plans for outside investment.

“It would require the right person to come along who understands what we’re trying to do as a brand.” Black Sheep is now a team of 10, based at a new clubhouse in Brisbane’s Teneriffe with a retail space, cafe and bike mechanic. As for the name, Polson says: “People identify with the notion of being a black sheep. We all want to be unique.”

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MAAP, Attaquer, Black Sheep and Babici were far from the first to make stylish cycle kit. That honour goes to British brand Rapha, which launched in 2004. “Australia kicked it along from there five years ago,” says Polson. “It took off in Europe after Australia’s lead. The next two years will see a real maturing of the cycling apparel market globally.”

Rapha’s founder is an English luxury brand consultant and accountant named Simon Mottram, who, like the rest of the recreational cycling world, had to be content to wear the garish, sponsor-branded kits of professional cycling teams. It was a uniform in so far as there was no option but to dress the same as everybody else. Cyclists had no form of self-expression. Mottram hated that, so he set out to change how cycling looked.

“No bank would touch me,” he told the BBC in 2015. “Who was really interested in cycling back in 2001 and 2002? It was just something us weirdos did.”

He eventually secured funding from a mix of private investors and family and friends. In 2007 Rapha sales accelerated after London hosted the prologue of that year’s Tour de France; England’s cycling success at the 2012 London Olympics gave the business a further push.

The Rapha aesthetic is one of clean, stylish, block colours and highlights in bright colours, often pink; its simple logo in a Trade Gothic font captures the “golden era” of cycling. Named for the 1960s Rapha Italian cycling team, which itself was named after the apéritif drink company Saint Raphaël, Mottram created a seductive, aspirational brand.

And didn’t the amateur cycling world soak it up. In 2017, Rapha sold for £150 million to RZC Investments, a private equity firm run by two cycling-mad grandsons of Walmart founder Sam Walton. In 2018, Rapha Racing Ltd reported turnover had risen by 26.2 per cent.

Attaquer cycling kit is based on art and streetwear, and surf and skate. Supplied

When Greg Hamer and Stevan Musulin founded Attaquer in 2012, Rapha was the only style-conscious exception to the logo-festooned team kits. “We saw a niche for the fashion-conscious customer,” says Musulin. “It was a niche borne of us not having options. You had gentlemanly kit from Rapha, or team kit. We wanted kit based on art and streetwear, and surf and skate.”

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They have produced outfits featuring the artworks of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. One show-shopper featured slices of watermelons, another drew upon 80s Australiana. Strong international sales for the brand reflect a taste for the Attaquer look.

“Australians have always been more fashion forward, willing to try new things and be more outstanding on the bike,” says Hamer. “And the Europeans are now embracing that. It’s created a spark.”

Musulin, 42, had been national sales manager for high street brands G-Star and Ben Sherman while Hamer, 38, had worked in the bike industry as a product manager for importers; both rode mountain bikes and road bikes.

“We set out almost like it was a bit of fun,” says Musulin. “We didn’t have high expectations. We just hoped it could be a full-time job and we could be our own bosses, and we achieved that a few years ago.” The company’s tagline is “Be your alter ego”.

Blacksheep's limited-release model – a small range that is launched every three months – sells out in hours. Supplied

“The range is expanding and we’re hitting new markets, but we’re still small enough to make changes quickly and have a go at new things,” says Musulin. Whenever Hones, the lawyer fond of Attaquer, orders his 60 or so kits for the next season, either Musulin or Hamer will deliver it to his office and stay for some beers in the boardroom.

The brand has a lot of growth ahead of it, says Musulin, who swiftly adds that they’re “not trying to take on the world”.

Babici's Salam shirt. Supplied

So how much does it cost to get the look? A jersey and bib (the bib-style knicks) from Attaquer costs up to $500. Designs are done in-house and manufactured in Italy and China. Fabrics are mostly Italian, some Swiss.

“To an extent, our radical kit is our point of difference,” says Musulin, “but we still have gentlemanly kit with block colours and minimal branding. Ultimately, premium quality is what will always bring people back to the brand.”

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Polson says Black Sheep’s limited-release model – a small range in progressive styling that is launched every three months – sells out in hours. He’s added an Essentials mix-and-match range and a winter Elements range. Black Sheep jersey and bib sets start at $350.

MAAP launched its first women’s range in 2016 and it’s growing evenly with men’s ranges. Cousins says three kits are required for people riding four to five times a week; a $2000 wardrobe outlay will see them through six months.

“There are so many pieces you require and we love making fully interchangeable collections,” he says. “A core collection will not date and then we will release more graphic-focused jerseys that are seasonal and the bib shorts work across all of it.”

So is there still a place for the logo-infested pro-team jersey? “It’s a bit of a no-no, which is in some ways a shame because the sales of those jerseys can help fund a team,” says Cousins. “But aesthetically it’s just not great.”

What all these kit manufacturers are doing, it’s clear, is enjoying the ride.

“You could be a 60-year-old businessman who every day of the week wears a suit,” says Musulin. “He buys his $12,000 Colnago bike and he wants to wear a watermelon kit because he knows it gives him an opportunity to express his personality and be himself. He can’t go to the office wearing that because the business dictates to him what he has to wear and how he has to look and behave to a large extent.

"When you get out on a bike you can do whatever the f--- you want, if you want to. We give people the opportunity to express themselves differently.”

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Philippa CoatesAFR Magazine deputy editorPhilippa Coates is deputy editor of The Australian Financial Review Magazine. She is based in our Sydney newsroom. Connect with Philippa on Twitter. Email Philippa at pcoates@afr.com.au